Compagnie Maguy Marin

Of White Bird’s lineup this fall, this French company is perhaps the most well-known and the most controversial: Portland audiences walked out when it last appeared here in 2002. This show, Salves, should be more palatable, but still challenging. It’s a haunting mix of dance and abstract theater that depicts a world in chaos. In it, tableaus pulse by, one after another. Religious and historic imagery, as well as cameos by works of renowned painters, punctuate the progression. It’s an act of resistance, an effort to save from destruction whatever has been left. White Bird co-founders Walter Jaffe and Paul King keep asking that first audiences don’t spoil the surprise ending.

Ecologically themed art tends to be dull and sanctimonious, but not so in the hands of Wesley Younie. His idylls of environmental paradise lost abound with equal parts whimsy and intelligence. In the ...